I have done my best to avoid talking about my 20-year relationship with Laurence Olivier for almost two decades. But now, due to the many stories flying around, most of which seem to favour his troubled wife Vivien Leigh, I want to protect his truth as I know it.

I first met Olivier on the set of the 1962 film Term Of Trial but I’d fallen in love with him years before that when he played Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. I was just 11 and dreamed about him until, at 18, I was starring opposite him.

We had to go to Paris to shoot on location – and there all my dreams were finally consummated. It was the beginning of an on/off love affair which would last 20 years, outside of my two marriages to Robert Bolt.

Price of fame: Laurence Olivier admitted to accidentally pushing his then-wife Vivien Leigh into a fire place

In 1963 he asked me to join his new Old Vic National Theatre to play Abigail in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which he was directing. In a break in rehearsals one morning, he noticed how exhausted I looked and asked me what was wrong.

I told him about my Nona saga. Nona was a fellow RADA student who had looked me up, and finding that I now lived in a house in Chelsea, barged through my front door with her suitcase one afternoon and asked if she could stay with me until she got her bearings.

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She apparently had no family – and stayed for three years.

When I told Larry that she had been diagnosed as a manic depressive, schizophrenic nymphomaniac – it wasn’t unusual to find three men queuing on the steps of my home waiting to ‘entertain’ Nona – his eyes popped open in astonishment.

‘A manic depressive, schizophrenic, nymphomaniac, eh . . ?’ he repeated quietly. ‘Well, well, what a coincidence . . . ’ He went on to tell me that Vivien had been diagnosed with exactly the same three conditions.

First meeting: Sarah Miles and Laurence Olivier in Term of Trial in 1962, where they embarked on a 20 year on/off relationship

Over the next 25 years, Larry would share many Vivien stories, sometimes portraying her in a very disturbing, cruel light. He, too, did not always emerge smelling of roses.

For example, he told how once, before he and Vivien parted for good, he pushed her aside during a row and she accidentally tripped and fell into the fireplace, hitting her head on the fire dog.

Larry thought he had killed her. When Vivien came round, he swore that if he didn’t part from her, next time he surely would kill her.

The more we compared notes, the closer we became, for we both shared the utter despair, the unimaginable frustration and hopelessness of wrestling with two such pitiable creatures, albeit not at the same time.

But because I was still going through my Nona era, Larry often gave me invaluable advice. Nona attempted suicide three times by swallowing sleeping pills. On two occasions I just managed to get her to hospital in the nick of time.

But the third time, seeing her lying there like Ophelia, her mane of almost pale green hair flowing over the white pillow, I whispered in her ear: ‘Nona, jump if you really want to die.’ A few months later she did.

Larry admitted that the period after
splitting up with Vivien was the darkest, most lonely time of his whole
life. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the fact that Vivien was always
threatening to kill herself while they were together, he might have
taken his own life, for he was seriously off balance at that time.

Larry
was too much of a gentleman to speak openly about Vivien’s sex
addiction. But I do know that Vivien would get her kicks by making sure
she would time her ‘amours’ to coincide with Larry returning to their
house in Chelsea or Notley Abbey, their country estate in
Buckinghamshire.

Jealousy
was rife between the pair, but Vivien became unmanageable when Larry
began having hit after hit. She wanted to be Larry.

She
demanded that he use his influence to create opportunities for her to
become a Dame, and felt that Larry wasn’t helping her sufficiently to
that end.

But he told me:
‘The truth is she wasn’t good enough in the theatre. She would never
even bother turning up for her voice production classes.

‘Now,
if she had stuck to filming, she would have won Oscar after Oscar, but
that wasn’t good enough for Vivien – she was determined to beat me at my
own game.’

I worked with Vivien in 1959, long before I met Olivier.

Diva: Vivien Leigh, as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the wind, demanded that Sarah was not allowed to wear any colour but black when they worked together

When I was 16 and still at RADA, my agent Robin Fox – the patriarch of the Fox acting dynasty – suggested I get my first experience of a film studio and he secured a walk-on part for me in The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone, starring Vivien and Warren Beatty.

It was daunting, scary even, walking through the gates of Elstree Studios at 5am and asking the porter at the front desk for my dressing room key, precisely as Robin had instructed.

I was somewhat puzzled to discover that although the number on the door matched that on my key, the name on the door read Lotte Lenya – who back then was a musical legend. Had there been some mistake?

I checked my key number yet again. It was correct so, full of confidence, I placed the key in the lock, only to receive three sharp taps on my shoulder as I did so.

‘The porter has obviously given you the wrong key, you shouldn’t be up here. Walk-ons are downstairs in the extras’ dressing rooms.’

Her sharp tongue and dazzling eyes were beginning to have an effect on me. I was only 16, after all, so what right had the great lady to terrorise me in this way?

‘Now off you trot this instant, and check your key number with the porter,’ she demanded. I showed her my key. ‘Look, the numbers match, but by all means, you check with the porter if you wish,’ I suggested, opening the door and walking in.

Lotte’s dressing table was full of her private, personal paraphernalia . . . maybe Vivien had a point, maybe there had been a mistake. Still, I trusted Robin, my wizard of an agent; he probably represented Lotte Lenya too, and had arranged it all beforehand.

I sat down as Robin had instructed to await the arrival of the costume designer, Bumble Dawson who was to dress me.

Bumble was Vivien’s best friend at that time. Suddenly Miss Leigh flounced in, stuffing a sheet of paper into my hand.

‘That’s a list of colours you can’t wear,’ she announced before flouncing out again. Every colour was on that list except black.

Rising star: Sarah in 1965, three years into her relationship with Laurence Olivier

Bumble turned away from me after reading Vivien’s long list. ‘Bitch,’ she mumbled under her breath, thinking I hadn’t heard. ‘We’ll show her . . .’

Indeed, she did. For my walk-on role, Bumble dressed me in an overwhelmingly soft, sumptuously sexy black leather suit, well ahead of its time. The moment I appeared on the set Warren did a double-take, which Vivien caught.

He then picked up a copy of Esquire magazine, placed it in front of his face, walked over the stage floor and made a beeline for me.

He stood there, directly in front of me, pointing to his face in close-up on the magazine’s cover. Suddenly he whipped it away, revealing his real face.

‘Hi, my name’s Warren Beatty,’ he said. He gave a slight bow before returning to his chair and glancing toward Vivien as he went.

From then on, I felt distinctly uncomfortable, with Vivien’s vixen eyes glued to either Warren or me all day.

It was obvious to me that they were having an affair. If only I could have pacified Vivien by telling her that Warren’s advances meant nothing to me – he wasn’t my type at all – the day might have turned out quite, quite differently. But I found Vivien to be a distinctly brittle, dark and jealous woman.

Since it was my first day in the movie world, I presumed that this egomaniacal behaviour must be the norm.

As fate would have it, a few years later I was invited to a tea party at the home of the actor Robert Morley in Henley. I recall it being a beautiful afternoon, and the garden was packed with showbiz types. About halfway through the afternoon, a lady dressed in black wafted across the lawn. Her escort led her to a chair in the shade under a tree.

I bided my time and then I went over with a plate of cakes and offered her one. She looked at me in a puzzled manner.

‘Have we met before?’ she asked in a somewhat tired voice.

‘Yes, on The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone,’ I replied. ‘You told me I could only wear black.’

‘Of course . . . ,’ she replied, and remembering, she sort of shrugged an embarrassed apology. Our eyes were drawn to her outfit. ‘Black suits you,’ I told her truthfully.

I’ll never forget the inconsolable fragility within her smile, the ravishing beauty now ravaged by life.

Whatever the truth about the relationship between Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh – and the truth, being such a pliable substance, is always in the middle somewhere – one thing is for sure: when Larry and Vivien split up most of the chattering classes sided with her.

Sarah Miles, whose screen credits include Hope And Glory, Lady Caroline Lamb and White Mischief, has turned her Sussex manor house into a retreat for healing and meditation. For more information visit chithurstmanorhealing.com.